Career Adaptability, Self-Esteem and Self-Efficacy Among Chinese College Teachers

This study addresses Chinese college teachers' self-esteem, career decision-making self-efficacy, and adaptability: demographic characteristics of respondents, interrelationship among these factors, and tests of differences based on sex, age, the highest educational attainment, and years in teaching. The study uses a quantitative correlational approach to identify the associations between self-esteem, self-efficacy, and career adaptability, using statistical tools such as Pearson's correlation coefficient to establish the strength of direction of these associations. Findings indicated that a significant proportion of the respondents were male at 58.9%, and were aged between 26-30 years at 43.1%, while 47.2% had less than five years of experience as teachers, and most of them had some graduate level of education, meaning most of them had some units of Master's education at 40.3%. The study also reports the levels of self-esteem as moderate, mean = 25.10, self-efficacy, mean = 5.37, and career adaptability, mean = 2.81. Significant influences were identified between the age and career adaptability of older teachers with high control, and educational attainment and both curiosity and confidence levels. There are no significant differences observed across demographic groups on self-esteem, and only educational attainment has a significant impact on self-efficacy. Such findings show that there is no linear correlation between career adaptability, self-esteem, and self-efficacy, and thus these factors are not interlinked in a linear manner. Based on such hypotheses, programs for intervention are suggested to be undertaken for the improvement of teachers' self-efficacy and teachers' career adaptability and this might be done, more specifically, by improving education qualifications and creating supportive professional environments.